The first round of the 2024 Great Pirate Paint Off has finished and we have some prizes to give away! The people’s votes are in and winners have been chosen for the Character and the Commander categories of this year’s painting contest!
Painting Contest Winners – Commander Entries
We had about 100 entries in the Commander category. A panel of judges cut it down to the top 20 entries for public voting. As voted by the public (1 vote per person), here are the top 3 entries for Commanders.
3rd Place Commander(s)
In third place, we have a 3-way tie from 3 great entries!
The third-place winners include:
It’s always good to see one of the Fire on the Frontier models in the mix!
2nd Place Commander
In second place we have a Spaniard!
1st Place Commander
And in first place, with the most incoming votes from the public and the winner of the massive Blackbeard miniature from Firelock Games, the most coveted of the Great Pirate Paint Off prizes:
Well done Jerry! The eyes are particularly well painted on this model.
Painting Contest Winners – Character Entries
The Character category is fun because people really get into some creative kitbashing. We had 14 entries in the Character category and all 14 were available to vote for in the people’s choice voting.
3rd Place Character
In third place, we have a Cook character, painted by Ryan Peterson.
2nd Place Character
In second place we have a beautiful British Standard Bearer mini by Jake Farris.
1st Place Character
Moving on to our first place award, again receiving the most votes in the public poll for the Character category, is:
Armed with both blunderbuss and pistol and apparently guarding the Church’s treasure trove, this priest looks like he means business! Well done and congrats to Jerry for winning in both categories! Jerry wins a copy of the “Box of Plunder” sprue (ironic that this priest is from that sprue!).
Random Commander Entry Prize – From Dead Man’s Chest
Tyler over at The Dead Man’s Chest blog has donated a prize for a random entry each month. For this month, Tyler has donated a finely painted Iberville commander model! Using a random number generator (no favoritism here), the winner of this prize came up for DAN CARLSON for his entry of… wait for it…. Iberville!
Check The Dead Man’s Chest for a blog post featuring the Iberville prize. Tyler plans to have some fun trivia questions posted each month related to the current categories of the Great Pirate Paint Off, keep checking back there regularly and you might get a crack at some more fun prizes!
Random Commander Entry Prizes from Blood & Pigment
We had so many great entries this month we felt we had to give out a couple more prizes! For these prizes we are giving away sets of the Blood & Plunder Activated Tokens that we our sourcing through Raven Banner Games.
By random number generator, our first random winner is Kurtis Fraley for his kitbashed Pirate Commander! He looks like he’s armed for bear with a true BRACE of pistols!
Kurtis will receive a set of 6 Teach Pirate Activated Tokens as a prize!
Our second random winner is Matthew Doerr for his Native American Commander entry!
It’s great to see some Native models in the contest and this was a great entry. Matthew will receive a set of our North American Activated Tokens.
For our third random drawing, we have Stede Bonnet by Patrick Tozer.
Painting up an impressive number of Commanders in January, this prize is well deserved! Patrick will receive an Avery Pirate set of Activated Tokens.
And for our last random entry, fate chose Daniel Perkins’ L’Olonnais submission.
Daniel will receive a set of French Activated tokens.
Final Thoughts
Well, we wish we could give out prizes for all more of these entries. Thank you to everyone who entered miniatures in these categories. We’d like to remind you that, even if you didn’t receive a prize, the judges may select your entry as a winner for one of the “best of the nation” prizes at the very end of the Great Pirate Paint Off in April.Thanks again to Firelock Games for sponsoring the 1st place Commander prize.
February’s Painting Contest Categories
Also, we will be changing things up a have a panel of judges vote for winners in next month’s categories of TERRAIN and OAK & IRON SHIPS. You can find details for these February’s categories here. We will post an update regarding People’s Choice vs Panel of Judges soon.
If you want to look over all the Commanders & Character entries, check out the full gallery here.